SPRING 2005

Functional Human NEUROANATOMY

NSC4366

Mondays, 2:00-4:45PM, Room GR4.301

Workshop: Mondays, 11-11:50AM, Room GR2.530

Dr. Larry Cauller, x2436, e-mail lcauller@utdallas.edu (BEST WAY TO CONTACT ME)

Office hours GR4.412 (next to elevators) on Thursday noon-1 or by e-appointment

website http://www.utdallas.edu/~lcauller

Course Goals:

·Familiarity with neuroanatomical IMAGES (MRI/CAT/PET scans) and neuro-medical terminology.

·Ability to locate or identify structures and relate those structures to their FUNCTION.

·Understand sensory-motor pathways and systems.

·Introduce Cortical connections and the neural basis of behavior and higher function. 

General description:

·This course is based upon my teaching experiences at medical schools in Northeastern Ohio U. and Brown U.  It covers the same anatomical concepts and details as basic medical neuroanatomy courses entitled Functional Human Neuroanatomy with more of an emphasis upon function and behavior than clinical evaluation.

·The general approach of the course is to build a cognitive model of the spatial structure of brain systems and use this model as a mneumonic device to reference details about the connectional organization, function and typical diseases of the brain.

·The style of weekly lectures is to begin with an overview of the system pathways and fill in the details by spanning scales from neurons to brain.

·Presentations will employ overheads of figures taken from the new text for this course, The Human Brain, by John Nolte. Other figures will be found in Principles of Neural Science by Kandel and Schwartz (which is also the text employed in other Neuroscience core courses). You are not required to buy a text but you should have access to one of these if you want easy reference to the figures presented in lectures.

Student evaluation:

·Midterm (1/3 course grade) and comprehensive Final exams (2/3).The midterm exam is largely intended to prepare you for the final so it may be dropped if it pulls down your grade.

·Each exam will consist of a written portion and a point-out practicum (each worth 50% of each test grade).

·Written portions of exams will include > 100 questions in the form of: multiple choice, true/false, short answers and simple diagrams. (Graduate students will be required to write answer a short essay question (1-2 hand written pages)).

·The point-out practicum will require students to identify structures and their connections or function on projected slides or MRIs of human brain sections.

·Grading will be based upon student exam scores in comparison to the database of scores obtained by hundreds of medical students that have taken virtually the same exams at NE Ohio U College of Medicine: a B grade must equal or exceed the mean score obtained by medical students (68%) and an A grade is equivalent to medical honors (85%).
 
 
 
 

CLASS SCHEDULE:

January 10

Introduction to Anatomical Terminology and Images

The Major Divisions of the Nervous System. 

January 17

 Holiday : Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 24 

Spinal Cord Organization and Reflexes

Ventricles and Circulatory System

January 31

Motor and Somatosensory Pathways

February 7

Brain Stem Structures and Organization

Reticular Formation 

Superior Colliculus

February 14

The Cranial Nerves 

February 21 

Autonomic Systems

Brainstem Modulatory Systems &Hypothalamus

REVIEW

February 28

MID TERM EXAM

March 7

SPRING BREAK

March 14

Vestibular System and Auditory System

March 21

                Indirect Motor Pathways: Cerebellum

March 28

Indirect Motor Pathways: Basal Ganglia

April 4

Olfactory System & The Limbic System

April 11

Visual System & Cortical Pathways

April 18

Cerebral Cortex and Higher Function

April 25

            OVERALL REVIEW

May 2

FINAL EXAMINATION